WWUTT 1986 Introduction to Matthew (Matthew 16:13-20)

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Today, we begin a study in the Gospel of Matthew. A lot of people would probably say they already know the

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Gospel of Matthew. We know the Gospels. We know the stories of Jesus. Are you sure about that when we understand the text?

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

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Visit our website at www .wutt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky, and greetings everyone. I have my Bible open to Matthew chapter 16, and I'm going to begin by reading verses 13 to 20 out of the

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Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he was asking his disciples, saying,

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Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said,

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Some say John the Baptist, and others Elijah, but still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

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He said to them, But who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said,

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You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said to him,

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Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my

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Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock

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I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

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I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

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Then he warned the disciples that they should tell no one that he was the

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Christ. And so we begin, as I mentioned in the introduction, a series through the gospel of Matthew.

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As we were coming close to the end of our series in Hebrews, a friend of mine asked me,

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Now when you finish up this study, where are you going next in the New Testament? And I told him, Well, I'm going to go back to the beginning and I'm going to do all four gospels in succession,

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I've already done John on the podcast, but I figure it's going to take us a while to get there and there's no harm in doing it again.

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And he said, Well, why do that? Why do those four gospels in a row? Why not do Matthew and then break it up with something in between and then do

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Mark? And I said, Well, first of all, because I don't have many books of the New Testament left to pick from.

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I have only four books left that I haven't done on the podcast. That's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Revelation.

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And he said, Well, I think Revelation would be fascinating. That's a that's a book that not a lot of preachers are willing to go through.

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And I said, True. And I almost just surprised everybody with it. Right before I went through Hebrews, I thought

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I was just going to open up Revelation and say, OK, guys, let's begin a series in Revelation. But then I settled on Hebrews.

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I'm going to save Revelation to be the last book that I go through in the New Testament. The second reason why

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I want to go through these four gospels and do them in order is really the main reason why

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I want to do this. It's because people don't know them.

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As much as we talk about Jesus in this nation, as much as we would call the

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United States of America a Christianized nation. I didn't say it's a Christian nation, but I think you could certainly argue it's

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Christianized as Christianized as America is as many churches as are here, especially living here in Texas.

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And I've lived most of my life in the heartland and how many churches there are all over the place. I was born in the

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Bible belt. There are more Southern Baptist churches in the state that I was born in than any other church in that state combined.

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At the time I was born, I don't know if that's still the case or not. Anyway, as Christianized as we are, as many churches as there are, as many

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Bibles as the average American owns. At Christmas time, you can go down the street and you see nativity scenes in people's yards.

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You've got Easter decorations up all around right now. You've got Easter promotion.

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I will pass by houses and they've got signs in the yard advertising their

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Easter service at their church, and they're all over the place. I was born in the Bible belt.

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I grew up in the heartland. I live in Texas. I see churches everywhere.

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We are a Christianized nation. But as Christianized as we are, people are ignorant to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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They could not even give you a definition of the gospel, let alone tell you what's in the gospels.

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They might know generic stories from the gospels, stuff like the birth of Christ and not even really the birth as it's told in Matthew and in Luke.

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They have like a cultural Christianity version of it. Same with other stories like Jesus and the woman caught in adultery or him walking on water or raising

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Lazarus from the dead or feeding the 5 ,000 or being crucified on a cross and risen again from the dead.

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They will know these stories and they'll have a very generic version of it, but they don't know the account as it is in the gospels.

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Which is why shows like The Chosen are so appealing because people don't know

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Chosen is not popular because people know the gospels. That show is popular because they don't know it.

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If scripture was sufficient in their lives, then shows like The Chosen would not be popular.

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They would just go to the Bible. This is way better and way more accurate. This is inerrant, unlike shows like The Chosen.

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But we see these things that are so popular, we hear these common versions of these stories that we've been told ever since Sunday school, ever since we were little kids, but do we actually know the words themselves?

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When was the last time that you opened up Matthew and read it? Or Mark or Luke or John?

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John tends to be one of the more popular ones. I hear every once in a while. In fact, I just pulled up a sermon series from a church

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I attended 20 years ago. I was just curious what the church was teaching on now, so I pulled up the latest sermon to see what they were going through.

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I don't know the pastor. He's a completely new pastor now. Wasn't the same guy as when I was there. But they're going through John.

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I was like, hey, lo and behold, that's the book of the Bible that they're going through. A lot of pastors will go through John.

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I don't hear so much Matthew, Mark and Luke. And so this is where we begin as we're going to start this series through these four gospels in succession.

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And here I've started in Matthew chapter 16 because when it comes to understanding the purpose and the intent of this book, why did

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Matthew write this gospel? What is the main message that he wishes to convey? It's not just to recall the biographical story of Jesus in his earthly ministry.

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Matthew has a particular purpose that he is writing for with this gospel, and it's so that you would know that Jesus is the

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Christ. And so this middle part right here in the gospel of Matthew, right in Matthew 16, where he asks his disciples, who do you say that I am?

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And Peter answers, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus says, blessed are you, Simon Bar -Jonah, for flesh and blood is not revealed as to you, but my father who is in heaven.

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That is what the gospel of Matthew is all about. That you would know that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Messiah, the king who was promised in the

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Old Testament, right at the very beginning of the gospel of Matthew. He goes through a genealogy so that you would see that Jesus is born in the line of Abraham.

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He is born a successor in the line of David so that we would know that he has the right to that throne, that he is king and he reigns.

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All of the Old Testament is pointing to this, the prophets who foretold it, the law that was pointing forward to him.

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And Matthew gets to be the one to open up the New Testament, showing us all these things that we have read about, the

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Messiah who was promised, the Savior who would come, the deliverer, the one who would ransom his people, the one who would deliver his people from their sins.

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All of this is pointing to this one, Jesus Christ. And that is the purpose of the gospel of Matthew.

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Now, in saying that, you might be thinking, well, sure, I believe that. Matthew means to show us that Jesus is the

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Christ. But don't all four gospels do that? Don't Mark and Luke and John do that as well? In a certain sense, certainly they do.

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But every writer of these four gospels has a different reason for writing.

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Ultimately, it is to show us that Jesus is God. You see that continuously in all four gospels.

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But Mark opens his gospel in saying that this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the

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Son of God. So he puts more emphasis on the reader understanding that Jesus is the

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Son of God. Luke seems to be writing to a more Gentile audience. He's writing to one particular person, in fact,

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Theophilus. And he said, it seemed fitting for me, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in an orderly sequence, most excellent

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Theophilus, so that Theophilus would have an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,

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Luke says at the very start. Now, we understand Luke to be the gospel the way that Paul preached it, since Luke was a fellow missionary of Paul.

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So he took what Paul preached and wrote it down in the gospel of Luke. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are talked about as the synoptic gospels, synoptic meaning same.

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But there's differences. And every writer has his own flair, his own style, and his own purpose for writing.

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John, as it says in the 20th chapter of that book, he's writing his gospel so that we would know that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, so that by believing in him, we may have life in his name. He mentions that at the very start of the gospel as well, so that by believing in Christ, we would live.

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And he is the light. Light and darkness are common motifs in John. He also wants to show us that Jesus is the great

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I am. That's a theme that's very prevalent in John. Matthew wants to show us that Jesus is the

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Christ, and he is the rightful heir to the throne of David. So he is the king who will sit on the throne of David forever, as was foretold in the

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Old Testament and is now being fulfilled in Christ. So that's Matthew's main objective.

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Now, you may have heard it said that Matthew is writing to a primarily Jewish audience and Mark is writing to a primarily

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Gentile audience. I disagree with that. I do not think that Matthew is writing to a primarily

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Hebrew audience. Now, it's true that he does mention a lot of Jewish things and shows how

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Christ is the fulfillment of those things that had been written down in the Old Testament. But even though you see

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Matthew do that more than you see Mark and Luke and John do it, that doesn't mean that Matthew, therefore, is leaning more toward a

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Jewish audience. There's nothing in the Gospel of Matthew that indicates that. It's kind of like that's just a common thing among scholars to think that Matthew is written to primarily

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Jews. Who are the first ones who come seeking Christ in the

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Gospel of Matthew? It's not Jews. It's Gentiles.

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It's the Magi from the East. The very first ones in Matthew's Gospel who come seeking the

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Christ are Gentiles. And so, it would be foolish of us to say, therefore,

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Matthew is primarily for a Gentile audience. Matthew is showing there, at the start of his Gospel, that the

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Jews were not looking for him. And so, just as John says at the start of his

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Gospel, he came to his own, but his own did not receive him. Matthew doesn't say that explicitly, but in the narrative it's certainly implied.

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The Jews did not receive him. Men from the East came looking for him, and they bowed before him and worshiped him.

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So, Matthew's audience is Jew or Gentile. It's those who would come to know the

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Gospel of Jesus Christ as Matthew records it for us here. Now, the structure of this book, of the four

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Gospels, Matthew is the most structured. And it's really the Gospel that I've spent the most time in studying.

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I know Matthew better than I know the other three. And I've been through Matthew more times than the other three.

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It's kind of like for the same reason that when you begin a Bible study plan at the start of the year, so this year is going to be the year that I'm going to read through the entire

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Bible. And you start in Genesis. So, every year you've made it through Genesis. Like 12, 13, 14 years in a row you've been through the book of Genesis.

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So, you now know that book better than every other Old Testament book. It's that way for me with the

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New Testament. Matthew. I've read Matthew the most. It's kind of funny, though, because I'll read Matthew, and then

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I'll just skip past it and go to like Romans and read through Revelation. So, I have not been in Mark, Luke, John, and Acts as often as I have been in Matthew.

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So, this is the book that I know the best, the Gospel that I know the best. This is a very, very structured

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Gospel. It's a historical book, remember. The first five books of the

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New Testament are all historical because they're all telling us things that happen in the history of Christ and then of the

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Church in the book of Acts. Then the rest of the New Testament is letters. Romans to Revelation.

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Even the book of Revelation is a letter. And you've got the epistles that give us Christian instruction from Romans to Jude, Revelation is the only book in the

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New Testament that is a prophecy book. And so, you read it prophetically. You would read and interpret

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Revelation different than you would read the other 26 books of the New Testament. So, Matthew is a historical book.

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But Matthew is not just going in succession from the birth of Christ to his ascension into heaven.

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Really, you don't have the ascension mentioned. It's only implied at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, but it's not explicitly mentioned.

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So, you start with Jesus' birth, you go through his death and his resurrection, and then the final instructions that he gives to his disciples.

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But he's not just going through a timeline, not just successively going through these things. Matthew builds his

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Gospel around five discourses or speeches or bodies of teaching, whichever way you want to consider that.

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The first of these discourses is also the longest one and the most popular, and surely you know it to be the

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Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. The last of the discourses is the Olivet Discourse in chapters 24 and 25 when

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Jesus is with his disciples on the Mount of Olives telling them about the signs of the end. And then the three discourses in between, you've got

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Jesus sending out the 12 in chapter 10, you've got the parables in chapter 13, and then

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Jesus talking about his death, forgiveness, the church discipline that you have in chapters 17 and 18.

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Now, the reason why there are five discourses is because Matthew is showing how

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Jesus is the fulfillment of the law. And how many books of the law are there? There's five.

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Certainly, Jesus did many other teachings than just five, but Matthew singles out these five because he shows how

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Christ is the fulfillment of the law. Jesus gave the law in the Old Testament, and here he is issuing commands for his followers, even here in the

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New Testament. So, throughout Matthew's Gospel, you have these narrative discourse pairs.

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It'll be narrative, action, and then there will be a body of teaching, and then you'll go back to narrative and action and storytelling again, and that's the way it goes through Matthew's Gospel.

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You could really break it up into seven parts, and these parts have clear division points.

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In chapter 7, verse 28, at the close of the Sermon on the Mount, it says, when

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Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching. In chapter 11, verse 1, it says, after Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee.

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In chapter 13, verse 53, when Jesus had finished these parables, he went on from there.

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So, you will see at a transition point where it says Jesus had finished something, and then he goes on to something else.

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So, you'll be able to identify the marks, the division points throughout Matthew's Gospel.

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And like I said, it's broken up into seven pieces. Part 1 is chapters 1 through 4, and in those chapters,

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Matthew shows us the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry, which also includes John the Baptist's ministry.

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But there, Jesus is showing, from his birth even, to his baptism and his being tempted in the wilderness,

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Matthew is showing us how Jesus succeeded where Israel failed.

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And really, Jesus is true Israel. Israel failed at all these points.

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Jesus succeeded at these points. And we'll talk about those things as we go through those first four chapters. So, then you have part 2, where you go from the narrative action into a discourse, and that's the

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Sermon on the Mount. That's chapters 5 through 7. Next, you have the narrative action in chapters 8 and 9, where you have

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Jesus calling his disciples. You have him healing the centurion's servant. And then it concludes with Jesus sending out the twelve in chapter 10.

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So, chapters 8 through 10 are the next part. That would be part 3. The fourth part is chapters 11 through 13, where you have rising opposition to Jesus' ministry.

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And then you have the parables, where Jesus talks about the true nature of God's kingdom. And then you have the next narrative teaching pair that goes from chapters 14 to 18.

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And right in the middle of that is the section that I started with. Jesus asking his disciples, who do you say that I am?

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And Peter confessing that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. That's right in the middle of the gospel. And it's like the whole gospel kind of revolves around that, so that we understand that Jesus is the

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Christ. And this is knowledge that we possess only because the Father reveals it.

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And that's not just said in Matthew chapter 16. It's in chapter 11 and in other places as well.

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We come to this knowledge that Jesus is the Christ because the Father reveals it to us, just as Jesus said it was revealed to Peter.

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The next set of narration and then discourse is in chapters 19 to 25.

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And after you finish that last discourse, the Olivet discourse, then you have 26 to 28, which is part 7.

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And that's the passion of the Christ. That's his death and his resurrection, and then the great commission that he gives to his disciples.

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So there you go. There's our overview to the gospel of Matthew. And it's pretty easy to take these 28 chapters and break it into seven parts.

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You would have thought that that many chapters might have had more parts to it. Well, no, it's just seven. It's a very simple outline to Matthew's gospel as we come to recognize who

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Jesus truly is, that we too may confess that he is the

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Christ, the son of the living God, and whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

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Hold on, Gabe. That's a verse in the gospel of John. Yeah, but it's the same promise in Matthew's gospel as well.

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Knowing Jesus, we are forgiven our sins and we have life with him forever in his eternal kingdom, the kingdom of God.

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That's a theme that comes up a lot. In the gospel of Matthew, let's finish with prayer. Heavenly father, we thank you for showing to us your son, that we may know

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Jesus Christ. He who died on the cross for our sins, rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, is coming back again to judge the living and the dead.

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And all of this is talked about in Matthew's gospel, that we may see that Jesus is the Christ, help us to know him better.

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And as we go through the gospel of Matthew, we also come to recognize what is expected of us as his followers.

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And we delight to do it to the glory of Christ, our King, living as his people in this world.

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Bring us to a deeper knowledge of this gospel so that we too may share it with others and they may come to a knowledge of the

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Christ and so be saved. It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt

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.com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our